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> I'm not really seeing Chrome suffering from privacy problems coming from MIDI devices.

Here's a CCS paper detailing why it's a bad idea for browsers to expose HW details without careful consideration:

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~arvindn/publications/OpenWPM_1...

> if you aren't into making music or learning keyboard or what have you, I guess you wouldn't care about MIDI

Considering the aforementioned problems, why would it make sense for browsers to prioritize MIDI above all else? And I highly doubt your six year old would refuse to use native apps, given the chance.

> (native apps) are often a bigger threat

I choose my native apps with care. For many apps, moving to the web doesn't mean that I would have to stop caring about trust. It just means that I would have to start being more careful about which sites I visit if browsers keep on exposing random HW details.

> need to be made for each platform

If you're only supporting Chrome, then you've stopped caring about portability. You're making it the user's fault if they don't use Chrome.

"why would it make sense for browsers to prioritize MIDI above all else?"

Who said above all else? That's pretty black and white. You could make the same argument if Firefox didn't support, say, microphone or camera. If you don't happen to use them (say, you don't use video chat as many didn't prior to 2020), you could ask why they are so important.

It's just one thing that Chromium does (and has done for year), that Firefox doesn't.

>And I highly doubt your six year old would refuse to use native apps, given the chance.

Which native app? The one she uses only works in a browser, and wouldn't work natively because it uses other things a native app can't use (such as YouTube interaction/synchronization). Also the graphics are far superior to anything I've seen not done in a browser, because it taps into other things that would be immensely difficult if the browser didn't make them available at a pretty high level.

https://youtu.be/64PkqQuE9h8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV6rdmdZnkA

And that app works on her Chromebook, as well as on my Windows and Mac machines.

I get that you like Firefox, but I don't see "you can just do that with a native app" as a great advertisement for it.

I use my browser to read, watch, and listen, as do many others. I have never heard of people creating music with Chrome. Support for MIDI should be the last thing browser vendors should be concerned with right now.

You probably hadn't heard of people watching videos in a browser until someone made a compelling app. Same goes for so many other things that run in browsers.

I'd suggest trying it out before writing it off.

The question you haven't answered is why would I want to use a browser for that? Why do you suggest that native apps are unfit for creative purposes? Browsers are somewhat unique in that it's a runtime that runs untrusted code from the internet, and I simply don't want such a security-critical runtime acquiring more capabilities without second thought. Especially for things like access to HW. Remember the fiasco with the Battery Status APIs? Remember how it's main usage in the wild was to enable user tracking?

Firefox can absolutely talk to the webcam and microphone.

Have you tried using a Chromebook? It should check a lot of boxes for you, and there are no native apps to worry about.

I agree with you. "Politics" aside, Chromium-based browsers just work better. It's odd that the 10xer super-hacker influencers here think that if you use MIDI, you're part of the problem.